


Atypical Sentiments

by AuroraNova



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Cardassia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:13:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29687235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraNova/pseuds/AuroraNova
Summary: A cold night is the perfect time to share dangerous information. Cardassia hasn't changed that much.Natima Lang, Elim Garak, and the treacherous business of Cardassian politics.
Relationships: Elim Garak & Natima Lang
Comments: 11
Kudos: 29





	Atypical Sentiments

**Author's Note:**

> It seems to me that Lang and Garak were perhaps not encountering each other for the first time in "Profit and Loss." Here's one possibility.

Natima appreciated the cold.

She disliked the sensation as much as any other Cardassian, of course. There was nothing pleasant about slowly becoming numb or edging ever closer to death, and she always had to be alert for signs of serious danger. She’d learned all the relevant medical details. Cold was a dissident’s greatest ally, and she could put up with a great deal of discomfort so long as she suffered no permanent harm.

On frigid winter nights there were hardly any prying eyes around, and even those who ought to have been alert were less threatening, tending to be either lulled into complacency by the cold or unwilling to investigate if it meant leaving a heat source. Plus, posing as the very poor taking a break from the most menial of jobs - or worse still, begging - reminded anyone around that life could have been much worse.

In short, there was no safer occasion than a cold night for meeting to share dangerous ideas. 

Natima had, for a brief time, thought such nights to be in her past. Now she realized the idea was foolish. Cardassia would not change so drastically in her lifetime. 

The eastern half of Makanta Park was now a large crater, the bottom of which was currently home to a family of lintani. Natima stepped around the edge gingerly. Some bomb craters left unstable rims of ground around them, and she would rather not have to concoct a lie to explain an injury or how she’d allowed herself to get bitten by an aggressive bird that children knew to avoid. This was risky enough already.

At the center of the park, just barely having avoided destruction, stood a monument to the dead soldiers of the First Breen War. It was a jagged thing twice her height, six spikes reaching to the sky as though aching to depart for Breen space and take vengeance. Natima had always thought it rather ugly. Regardless, she was glad it had survived the Dominion assault. Any structure which remained intact was a victory, however small (or unattractive). 

There was another figure near the monument, as heavily bundled in tattered clothing as she. Anyone who walked by would assume the poor individual hoped to get an early start on the day’s begging.

Natima made a particular series of clicking sounds, one easily dismissed as a mother kelat communicating with its young. 

The answering call was slightly different, the reply of a juvenile. In this case, it meant that the individual was who she thought he was, and he was not aware of any danger. Their meeting could commence. 

“Your enemies are moving against you,” she said. It was unwise to waste time on pleasantries.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”

Garak always did like to hide behind flippancy. 

“You know,” she said.

“Of course I know. I’m not a fool, Lang.”

No fool could have survived as he did. Natima had half expected him to be caught and executed years ago. More than half, perhaps, and she’d spent the entire time fearing he would take her with him. 

He’d been simultaneously her best hope and her worst fear. 

“Do you also know they’ve found your ship?” she asked.

“That does complicate things.”

Natima was a bit proud of herself for having information he didn’t. It happened so rarely with Garak. “I don’t know what else you’re planning, but you’d better do it soon.”

“As touched as I am by your confidence, we both know I don’t have any options left but to escape.”

So he did have another way off Cardassia. Good. 

“I suspected that was the case,” she admitted. Garak had far too many enemies in positions of power. “I hoped otherwise.”

“Always the optimist,” he said, allowing a hint of fondness in his tone.

“Enough of a realist to know I can’t vouch for you now.” As much as she wished mightily that wasn’t the case. 

“Certainly not. I won’t have you risk Cardassia’s future for my sake.”

Because that was the injustice of it all. Garak was about to be tried and executed for his work in the Obsidian Order. Work she could only imagine and which, in ordinary circumstances, she would be inclined to agree merited execution. The Obsidian Order, and anyone still alive who had been part of it, deserved whatever they got for all the damage they had done. 

These weren’t ordinary circumstances. But who would believe her if she said that Enabran Tain’s most loyal man and hand-picked successor was in fact a dissident? 

Without Garak, the dissident movement likely would’ve been eliminated a decade ago. Natima hadn’t trusted him at first, of course. She simply had no choice but to pretend she did, because what else could she do once he revealed his employer? 

She needn’t have worried. Much. He proved himself to be an incredibly effective double agent, working with the dissidents and protecting them from the worst of the Order’s wrath without tipping off Tain - the latter, she understood, being an incredible feat. Natima hadn’t always agreed with Garak’s methods. On occasion he was willing to sacrifice some of her people to protect the larger movement, which Natima hated, and she still thought he ought to have warned her before having her house burned to the ground. Differences of opinion notwithstanding, she had tremendous respect for what he’d managed to accomplish. She doubted there was another person alive who could’ve done what he did. 

Amazingly, he’d never been caught. Tain might have suspected him - Natima never did learn why exactly Garak was exiled - but if there had been proof, Garak would’ve been long dead. 

Unfortunately, because he had been so careful to leave no evidence, there was none now to prove that he shouldn’t be tried as an enemy of the new state. Three dissident leaders knew he was working with the movement. One had been killed by Dukat once he took power, and the second was killed in the Dominion assault. Only Natima was left.

She’d already owed Garak her life four times over before she ran into him on Deep Space Nine, where he saved her yet again, along with Rekelen and Hogue. It galled her that she could not tell the truth and keep him from execution. 

Yes, informing him not to use his hidden ship was helping save his life, but it didn’t seem like enough. He would be exiled again. 

If she spoke of his assisting the dissident movement without providing evidence, her credibility would be irreparably damaged. People would probably wonder what he’d used to blackmail her. Natima wouldn’t have minded that, except her loss of status would give the traditionalists a foothold, and that was the last thing Cardassia could afford. 

Garak knew all of this as well as she did. Probably better. Thus, he gave her a companionable nod and said, “I appreciate the warning. This may be of use to you. The encryption code is number fourteen.”

She accepted the datarod. Information, of course. Garak always believed it was the greatest tool at one’s disposal and hoarded his jealously. If he was giving his precious information to her (some of it, at least; Natima was not so naive to assume he shared everything he knew), she would not see him again. 

She would miss him. Reliable allies were difficult to find. 

“May I make a request of you?” he asked.

“You know you can.” Ancestors knew she owed him more than she could ever repay. 

“Intek is a promising young man.”

He was indeed. Garak had picked an assistant with no connections of which to speak and great aptitude. Partly by nature, partly out of gratitude, Intek was extremely loyal to his benefactor. 

“I would hate to see his idealism keep him from reaching his full potential. Will you try to convince him to denounce me at the earliest opportunity?"

“I’ll do my best.”

“Thank you.”

It occurred to Natima that Garak’s life was rather like those dreadful classic novels he so loved (or professed to love, as she’d never figured out if that was real or part of his carefully constructed facade): all thankless sacrifice for the state and personal tragedy. 

Maybe he appreciated those books because he’d always seen his own future in them. 

“Cardassia is under capable stewardship,” said Garak, which was the highest praise Natima had ever received in her life.

“I strive. And I will look out for Intek.”

“You might also help yourself to the security equipment in my office before anyone else does. You won’t find better.”

Natima inclined her head in grateful acknowledgment, for the equipment, yes, but more so for everything else. “I trust I will soon hear our colleagues bemoaning your escape.”

“Indeed. Farewell, Lang.”

“Farewell, Garak.”

As he turned away, Natima mused that, besides the injustice to Garak and her own unhappiness, this was a terrible loss to the state. She resolved that someday she would tell his story. Even if she was an old woman and he was dead, once it was safe, she wanted Cardassia to know what he had done. This was a very atypical sentiment. Downright unCardassian, some would say, but then, people had been saying that about Natima’s views her entire adult life, so it didn’t bother her at all. 

There would be room in this new Cardassia for atypical sentiments. Natima would make sure of it. 


End file.
